Moterų lyderių fenomenas radikalios dešinės partijose: Italijos atvejis /

Radical right parties traditionally have male leaders, male representatives and male voters, which leads to them advocating for patriarchal norms and having ideologies that are discriminatory to women. However, over the past few years, we have seen an increase of women leading radical right parties all over Europe, which could be seen as conflicting with the parties’ ideologies and interests. This leads to the main question of the study: why do radical right parties elect women? Few studies have been conducted on this topic, yet none of them focus on why radical right parties elect women as an electoral strategy, specifically analyzing the case of Giorgia Meloni and the Italian Fratelli d’Italia party. Therefore, this study aims to find out if and how Giorgia Meloni employed communication strategies based on shared identities with female voters to garner more electoral support for the FdI party. To answer the main question, the theoretical framework that is employed in this study is the combination of the strategic descriptive representation theory, and the descriptive presentation theory, which is essential in ensuring that the faulty logic of grouping all women into the same category is avoided. The theory of strategic descriptive representation helps us answer the question of is it relevant for the FdI party to seek to gain more votes from female voters, and the question of does the FdI party actively seek to gain more votes from female voters. Alternatively, the theory of descriptive presentation helps us answer the question of how does Giorgia Meloni and the FdI party seek to gain more women voters. The case study method allows us to not only understand this case better, but to also analyze it thoroughly and derive more general theoretical statements about patterns in similar cases. The case study revealed that Giorgia Meloni is seeking to gain more female voters by trying to appeal to them by emphasizing their shared identities. Out of the three categories through which Meloni communicates her identity as a woman, two (traditional gender roles and nationalism) categories aligned with the theoretical framework. This proves that Meloni employs the shared identities pertaining to categories of traditional gender roles and nationalism as an electoral strategy. Additionally, this analysis revealed how the FdI party uses the identity of being a woman to soften the party’s image and justify some of their more extreme stances. The conclusions of this study also allow us to observe how radical right parties use women to normalize their extremist ideologies in modern day societies.

Grantor dc:publisher

Institutional Repository of Vilnius University

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Dubinskaitė, Vėtra,

Statement dc:rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Language dc:language

lit

Repository record dc:identifier

https://repository.vu.lt/VU:ELABAETD210580340&prefLang=en_US

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vu.lt:elaba:210580340